How to Deal with an Ethical Dilemma

2018-12-21 来源: 51due教员组 类别: Paper范文

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的paper代写范文- How to Deal
with an Ethical Dilemma，供大家参考学习，这篇论文讨论了如何处理道德困境。人们在日常生活中或多或少都会面临道德困境，在道德困境中不知道该怎么办，这是很正常的。人们之所以会陷入道德困境，是因为无论采取任何行动，都会出现问题。当一个人真正陷入道德困境时，他们所要做的就是尽力达到道德标准。不同的伦理理论对于同样的伦理困境会产生不同的道德行为，人们应该自己判断应该采取什么行动。

Introduction

It
is common sense that people will be confronted with an ethical dilemma in their
daily life more or less and they do not know how to act when they are in an ethical
dilemma. The reason why people will be put into an ethical dilemma lies in that
there will be problems no matter what action they take or whether they should
take a certain action or not. And when one is really in an ethical dilemma,
what they have to do is to try their best to meet the ethical standards. The
specific ethical dilemma that I would like to put forward is a hypothetical
situation in which one man is actually near his death out of his getting a
fatal disease but he still doesn’t know about the truth. In his mind, there is
just something wrong with him and it won’t pose any threat toward his life at
all. Therefore he lives happily and positively everyday in the hospital and
waits the day when he can recover and discharge from hospital. What is a pity
to say is that there is no treatment as can be used to cure his disease and
there are only about two months left for him to live. So an ethical dilemma
appears as for whether he should be told the truth about his approaching death
or he should be kept in the dark about his death.

How
to Deal with an Ethical Dilemma

Concerning
this ethical dilemma as for whether one should tell the man the truth or not,
the first theory that will be involved is the natural law. Natural law means
the belief that certain laws of morality are inherent by human nature, reason,
or religious belief, and that they are ethically binding on humanity (Legal
Dictionary. 2017). Natural law is universal and it applies to each and every
one in the same way. Apart from that, natural law has specifically separated
“right” from “wrong” and something “right” is believed to be good and useful
while something “wrong” will be considered as bad, destructive or evil. From
the perspective of natural law, “right” actions equals to morality and “wrong”
actions denote immorality, which is applicable to all under whatever
conditions. Natural law determines that one has to do in accordance with
people’s inclination to live a good and innocent life. Thus when putting the
theory natural law to the aforementioned ethical dilemma, it is obvious that
the moral behavior is to directly tell him the truth about his approaching
death. Even if the behavior of telling the truth to the man about his death
would bring him fear and sadness, the act of telling a lie is against our human
nature. Natural law forbids telling a lie under any circumstance no matter
whether this lie is for a good purpose or a bad purpose. Thus a fair knowledge
can be obtained that to tell a lie to others is wrong, and that to be honest to
others is right. A law against telling a lie can be regarded as a just law
under the natural law theory. Natural law won’t take too seriously about the
consequences of the moral behavior but instead it undoubtedly emphasizes quite
much on human nature. Besides, the patient has the right to know the truth,
which can as well indicate that he should be informed of his death at the same
time.

With
the theory the virtue ethics being stated at length in the above, what follows
is the second theory the virtue ethics. Virtue ethics lays high emphasis on the
role of character and virtue in moral philosophy but not either performing
one’s duty or taking actions in order to lead to good consequences (Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2017). According to the virtue ethics, the moral
advice is that “act as a virtuous person would act in your situation” (Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2017). Detailed speaking, virtue ethics does not
come up with any universal principle that can be employed in any moral situation
but it advocates the stable and natural internal tendencies of one character.
Though the virtue ethics does not have clear principles for guiding action, it
can still play a role in better managing people’s actions in that it has
specified that people should do what is virtuous based on different given
situations so that they can become a virtuous person in the end. So a fair
knowledge can be obtained that the virtue ethics promotes people’s cultivation
of appropriate and virtuous inner states and depositions, which can help guide
people to act in accordance with their inner virtuous depositions in the due
time. To put the virtue ethics into this ethical dilemma, what one has to do is
not to tell the truth to the man about his death but instead tell a white lie
to him that he can recover soon. In this way, the patient can continue to live
happily each and every day in the rest two months in his life rather than live
in fear and sadness out of his knowing about his death. It can be easily
understood in that one will unconsciously produce a sense of fear when they
know that they are going to die and that’s right why each and every person are
afraid of death. Based on this, there is no doubt that the act of not telling
the patient the truth will be virtuous out of the inspiration from the virtuous
inner depositions.

After
putting there two theories into the ethical dilemma, it is obvious that the
theory natural law will be a wiser choice to handle this ethical dilemma and
this theory fits in my opinion better. As far as I am concerned, informing the
patient of his approaching death can enable him to know the truth so that he
can know clearly about how many days are left in his life. It can not be denied
that it will bring him endless fear and sadness after his knowing about his
death and he will definitely be depressed for several days or longer. But
things may not be that terrible. When the man knows clearly about his limited
left days, he may feel the preciousness of every day left, leading to his
cherishing those limited days. He will live every day as the last day of his
life, contributing to his making the value of a day to the full in the due
time. Moreover, he can seize every minute to do whatever he would like to do so
as not to leave any regret behind before his death. In this way, the man can
still make his life meaningful and each and every second count in the rest of
his life, which can be deemed as a good way for him to end his life. In this
sense, telling the man the truth does seem to be a moral act. However, what is
a must to mention is that it is necessary to comfort him while telling him the
truth so as to ensure that he won’t be too depressed at his approaching death.
Only in this way can the possibility for him to pull himself together to live
his rest few days of his life. Suppose that he is not informed of his death, he
then may live the rest days the same as before and he won’t seize time to do
what is unfinished and what he would like to do in a hurry.

Conclusion

To
sum up, a reasonable conclusion can be drawn that different ethical theories
will come up with different moral behaviors toward the same ethical dilemma and
people should judge on their own as for what actions they should take. But the
most important is that no matter what actions people choose to take, they have
to bear it in their mind that they have to be as moral as possible and they
should bring the least detrimental effect toward the people concerned in the
ethical dilemma. Only in this way can the ethical dilemma be dealt with in a
moral way.